Argyle Primary Curriculum Statement
The intention of our curriculum is to:
- inspire pupils,
- broaden their horizons,
- take them out of the classroom and open their eyes to a wide range of opportunities and experiences…
whilst ensuring that they develop very strong skills in English, Mathematics and Science.
It takes account of the fact that, at any time, approximately 50% of our pupils may be considered disadvantaged and ensures that all pupils, whatever disadvantage they may face, enjoy rich experiences and opportunities to develop their cultural capital.
The curriculum places an equal emphasis on knowledge and skills and has been designed to be progressive so that the knowledge and skills taught in one unit are built upon in successive units. Wherever possible, cross-curricular links are made so that pupils have time to explore a topic in depth.
Excellent literature and high quality educational visits provide a structure to our curriculum ensuring that children read widely, are read to and physically experience an aspect of each curriculum topic.
The entire curriculum is underpinned by a clear set of values –excellence, collaboration, kindness, drive, compassion, respect, self-control, courage, responsibility, empathy, positivity, fun, love, honesty, friendship, kindness, patience, wisdom, gratitude, self-belief, fairness, forgiveness and peace.
These values support pupils in identifying common themes in their learning and in making links between subjects as well as supporting their social. emotional and moral growth.
Music and Art are strengths of our school and are used skilfully by teachers to bring humanities and science to life as well as being taught as discrete subjects. Our Modern Foreign language is Latin. This ensures the systematic teaching of spelling and grammar and further supports conceptual understanding in history, maths and science.
Oracy is prioritised and taught explicitly across the curriculum from our Early Years Foundation Stage to Year 6. Children learn subject specific vocabulary and appropriate structures that enable them to apply that vocabulary. They learn model texts by heart so that they develop a bank of high-quality language. They are taught to explain their reasoning in all subjects, to develop an argument and debate an issue.
Throughout each year we use feedback from children and staff to refine the curriculum and further adapt it to meet the needs of current children and take advantage of any relevant special performance or exhibitions.
The curriculum is personalised for pupils with SEND needs so that they are fully included and able to enjoy learning with their peers. Where necessary we take steps to adapt the learning environment to meet the specific needs of a child. Full details about our approach to including children with SEND can be found in our SEND policy and information report on the policies page of this website.
Take a look at our curriculum overviews for each year group. Further information can be found on our individual subject Curriculum pages.
ARGYLE CURRICULUM 2021 - 22 | ||
Curriculum Implementation
We ensure that our planned curriculum is implemented in full by providing all teachers with detailed unit plans and high-quality resources.
The teaching of reading is prioritised. Phonics is taught daily to Reception, Year 1 and Early Readers across the school. At Key Stage 2 children read for at least one hour a day during two dedicated reading sessions. The majority of children will read with an adult everyday. Wherever possible cross-curricular reading books are used to support the implementation of the Humanities or Science curriculum.
A team of subject specialist teachers oversee the implementation of plans and support teachers to ensure that their teaching builds upon children’s prior knowledge and challenges them appropriately.
The implementation of our curriculum is supported by the use of our grounds – our nature garden, roof-top greenhouse, STEAM lab, music room and art studio all facilitate subject specific learning.
Our pedagogical approach is broadly based upon Rosenshine’s Principles of Direct Instruction:
1. Daily review
2. Present new material using small steps
3. Ask questions
4. Provide models
5. Guide student practice
6. Check for student understanding
7. Obtain a high success rate
8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
9. Independent practice
10. Weekly and monthly review
Curriculum Impact
We regularly review the impact of our curriculum – by talking to children, sampling work and analysing assessment data.
Published assessment data in Reading, Writing and Maths (available in the Our School – Academic Achievement section) demonstrates that our children achieve highly and that, prior to the pandemic, we were successfully closing gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. Our internal data, which shows that some gaps have widened over the past two academic years, drives our current actions to support pupils to catch up.
In addition to assessments, the impact of our curriculum can be seen in the high standard of children’s outcomes – in dance, STEAM projects, art and music as well as in children’s’ own exercise books and in children’s discussions of their learning.
Many of our outcomes are celebrated in our weekly newsletter which is published on our website each Friday – please do take a look.